ELEANOR HALL: The latest figures on child abuse cases in Australia show there's been a 20 per cent rise in substantiated cases over the past 12 months.

The latest report from the Institute of Health and Welfare also finds 40 per cent of children in out of home care have been there for at least five years.

Emily Bourke has our report.

EMILY BOURKE: The latest figures show a worrying turnaround to the long-term decline in the number of proven cases of child abuse and neglect.

But experts say the trend suggests child protection authorities are becoming more proactive, and that case-workers are completing more investigations and getting more children out of harm's way.

Tim Beard is head of the Child Welfare and Prisoner Health Unit at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

TIM BEARD: Basically this annual report shows that the numbers of substantiated child abuse cases has increased over the past year and it's quite a substantial increase by about 6,000 children. So we've gone from 31,500 to 37,800.

EMILY BOURKE: Does this suggest that the number of notifications, the entire pool of abuse notifications has gone up or just the number of investigations that then prove to be substantiated?

TIM BEARD: Yeah, look that's the interesting part of the story. The number of notifications actually hasn't really increased substantially over the past year but the number of children in substantiated cases has.

So what's it's actually showing you is that this could actually be partially a good news story because it means that the more severe cases are coming to the attention of governments sooner than they otherwise might have.

EMILY BOURKE: What's happening to these children?

TIM BEARD: In a lot of cases we're seeing evidence that a lot of the same children and young people are coming through the system multiple times. Quite a few have been in care for more than five years and that comes out to about 38 per cent so about two in five young people have been in care, continuously that is, for more than five years.

But then at the other end of the scale we found that about one in five have only been in their current placement for less than 12 months so there is quite a lot of what we call churn in the system so young people coming in and out of the system or coming in for only a short period of time while whatever's happening in their lives is being resolved.

EMILY BOURKE: Nationally the most common type of abuse was emotional - making up 36 per cent of cases, followed by neglect at 31 per cent and then physical abuse at 21 per cent.

Sexual abuse made up 12 per cent of cases.

Tim Beard says authorities are moving more quickly when it comes to younger children at risk

TIM BEARD: What we found is that the most likely group to be substantiated are actually the infants so children aged under the age of one and their rate of abuse and neglect or their rate of contact with the system is almost double of the average rate and that really is because government's prioritise that group as a very vulnerable group.

They don't have a voice of their own, they can't report their own abuse or neglect so governments prioritise basically advocating on their behalf and ensuring that they're prioritised as the group that needs the most protection.

EMILY BOURKE: And he says the current state-based inquiries into child protection have sharpened the focus of child abuse and how authorities should respond.

TIM BEARD: We do find that when particularly when large jurisdictions are going through those inquiries that the community becomes more aware of what's going on and the authorities tend to report more often and the more severe cases come to the attention of government.

So because that's happening in a couple of large jurisdictions we think that has quite a large impact on the numbers.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Tim Beard, the head of the Child Welfare and Prisoner Health Unit at the Institute of Health and Welfare ending that report from Emily Bourke.

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